I walk to the places
We never went with each other
I talk about the things
I never talked about with you
I feast without you by my side
Never once thinking of you
Until now

Ne’er before had mortality
Seemed so bleak and grim
Until I laid upon
Not your visage; pale and fair
But your casket bedecked with petals
Thinking about the light
Cast out to where your future should have been
Instead of eight feet underground

I bluster
As I try to understand
The change of fate
The whims and cruelties
Of people I don’t know
Even you

The one whom I cried for
And still continue to cry for
Because I cannot articulate
How two lovers perish
In such fateful wreckage

I think of from where I had come
And from where I must go
Periphery, you were
Periphery, you remain
Except when tears line my eyes
As I realise that the future
Isn’t as predictable as I thought

I will never hold your baby
In my arms
And you will never hold mine
But that is the domestic writing
Thinking about the future
So cloudy and grey
Even when I hold onto roses so stiffly

Roses that I must,
I am afraid,
Lay at your head and feet
Whilst you sleep within the earth
And will never take breath again
Not to sing or laugh
Like you did when we were children

When we still went to the same places
And still talked about the same things
And ate next to one another
Never thinking
The future would quite be like this
Never thinking we would be caught
In the fray of fate as things turn out
So wrong and so sad

But I continue to think of things
I could have said when you were alive
When I didn’t cherish your presence
Because memories are so easily
Made and forgotten
But please take them all
And I will continue to give
All these unspoken words you
In flower bouquets and poetry

For that is all I have
To remember you by,
My dear ailurophobe
Named grace twice
Fitting as you feel twice buried
So, I bid you farewell
With this to part us
But you will never leave my thoughts
Even as I stray along the path
And am subject to fates we never imagined